1940: League Of Nations

With war conditions prevailing in Europe, Asia and Africa, political activities of the League of Nations have ended for the present. Further formal withdrawals included Rumania, which announced its intention on July 11, and Denmark on July 19; Chile's withdrawal became effective June 2 and Venezuela's July 15.

Non-Political Activities.

In the technical or non-political field, representatives of ten countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Great Britain, France, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland and Turkey) met at The Hague, February 7-8, to establish a 'central committee of thirty-two members for economic and social questions' as recommended by the Special Committee on International Cooperation in Economic and Social Affairs, set up by the Council in May, 1939. Plans for reorganization were completed in April. The former sections of the Secretariat will be grouped in three departments — general affairs, economic and financial questions, and the combination of the health section with social questions, opium and intellectual cooperation into a Department of Health, Drug Control and Social and Cultural Questions. The Health Committee of the new department has decided to build up gradually an international documentation center for health matters. This in time will provide adequate facilities for supplying documentary material relating to such matters as health conditions in particular regions, the course of prevailing epidemics, and recent demographic data. Requests for such material have greatly increased from both official and unofficial sources and go beyond the health organization's current facilities. At present the health center can send only what information it has, but it is preparing for the future by arranging the classification and utilization of all its documentary material.

While the reorganization is purely administrative and does not affect the technical work itself of the League, yet it will enable a more effective coordination and centralization of work under a greatly reduced staff. The budget for 1941 amounts to 50 to 65 per cent below that for 1940 owing to smaller contributions from some states and none from others. During May a large percentage of the Secretariat's staff was retired or had their contracts temporarily suspended; slightly over one hundred persons, out of a previous maximum of seven hundred, continue in Geneva. The Secretary-General. M. Joseph C. Avenol, resigned on July 26, and Mr. Sean Lester now serves as Acting Secretary-General. In July Princeton University, in conjunction with the Institute for Advanced Study and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research at Princeton, invited the League to send to Princeton for the duration of the war its sections of finance and economies, opium control, and public health. The Financial and Economic Section accepted the offer and now has its headquarters in the building of the Institute for Advanced Study. Eight members of the section went to Princeton from Geneva.

Research and Information Services.

League functions, especially in research and information, are continuing, although practically no meetings of even technical bodies are being held despite the much greater importance of various problems during war conditions. Activities regarding registration of treaties, mandates, minorities and armaments are carried on although with diminished pace. Reduced operations, personnel and funds necessitate fewer publications, but others continue, such as the Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, the Weekly Epidemiological Record, the Treaty Series, the Annual Review of Money and Banking, the Armaments Year-Book, the Statistical Year-Book, as well as numerous publications on social and health questions. The League library is open on a reduced scale, with its collections intact and some accessions through gifts, exchanges and purchase.

International Labor Office.

The International Labor Office continues on a fifty per cent smaller budget: its publications go on, but no meetings of the Conference, the Governing Body, or of any other of its political bodies, are in prospect. A branch office, with a staff of thirty persons, has been opened temporarily in Montreal. Canada, chiefly for serving the Western Hemisphere in technical matters, while the headquarters in Geneva remain the center for archives and documentation. Both offices maintain a certain amount of research and information collection.

Permanent Court of International Justice.

With Holland under German occupation, the Permanent Court of International Justice could not function and most of its personnel had to disperse. Appropriations for the Court in the League's budget have provided for maintaining the Registry and for partial indemnities for the judges during the present time, and in October the President and the Registrar were staying in Geneva; but no resumption of the Court's operations can be contemplated for the time being. Great Britain on March 11 renewed its acceptance, for a further five years, of the Court's jurisdiction on the same reservations as before, save that it would not accept jurisdiction in disputes arising from events occurring when the country was involved in hostilities.